


extrapolations

by elyndis



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Gen, brownstone shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 14:14:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4140807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elyndis/pseuds/elyndis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scenes inspired by small moments from the show.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Most are post-eps/episode tags written while season 3 was airing, and have been jossed by canon since.

_**Sherlock:** She's asked only for my genetic material._  
_Her expectation as to my involvement in the child's life would end there._  
_**Joan** [animatedly] **:** What did you say?_  
_**3x18 The View from Olympus**_

 

It’s nothing at first. Well, it’s not nothing, but it’s not something either.

She likes her office. It’s undeniably a basement – it doesn’t get much natural light and there’s no running water and paint is peeling off the walls, but she likes it anyway. And at night, with shadows settling into the corners and the muffled sounds of the street filtering in through one open window, it feels like a sanctuary, her sanctum sanctorum. Her bedroom upstairs remains spartan, but the office slowly takes on character. Or clutter, and maybe that’s a kind of character too. It makes her comfortable, and her ease seems to draw some corresponding disposition out of Sherlock as well.

He’d started opening up to her more since her return to the brownstone, but it wasn’t until Agatha and her requested donation of his _issue_ that he actively sought her out not to seek her council on something case-related, but just to talk. She’d been so intrigued by the situation at the time, how the whole arrangement would even work, that she hadn’t thought much about how easily he’d opened up to her on a personal matter. Later, lying in bed with the sugar from the ice-cream working through her system, she wondered if Sherlock had really come downstairs to hide from his houseguest, as she’d assumed, or if he’d been there because he wanted her company. After all, it was a multi-story brownstone and he had no scarcity of places in which to hide.

In any case, that case and their houseguest might have sparked something, because he starts coming down to visit her, on the nights she’s working late and loses track of time, or just too lazy to brave the elements to go back upstairs.

And sometimes she comes home from running down a lead or connecting with her fellow humans to find him on the couch in her office. He rarely brings work down with him, unless he’s using Clyde as a sounding board in her absence. It’s kind of ironic, that he pushed for her to have her own space, only to come pawing at the door like a lost puppy the moment she’d settled in.

He seems to view himself as a guest in the space at least, so there’s that. He confines himself to the couch, and he doesn’t – to the extent of her knowledge, and she has become a better detective over time – snoop around.

So it’s not nothing.

And the rules are different in the basement. Because they don’t touch. For two people who literally live together, they rarely touch. And they don’t talk about it. About how they exchange heavy looks in lieu of hugs, about how in the receptionist area of every multi-million-dollar banking or law firm they’re investigating they sit with their customary six inches of empty space between them.

It’s not really a thing. Or, it’s their thing. They don’t touch and they do hold intense eye contact and they sometimes finish each other’s sentences. But the rules are different in the basement. Down here their carefully maintained boundaries, reinforced over time so that the avoidance of each other’s space is essentially second nature by now, are a little smudged. They’re a little less Holmes and Watson and a little more Joan and Sherlock, somehow.

And they talk. They spend a decent number of hours during the day physically together, and are essentially always in contact digitally, but they find things to talk about. She shows him the pictures she snapped of the flowering tree across the street that’s finally started to claw its way into spring, and he tells her something new he’s learned about the migration patterns of Arctic tern from one of his forums.

There’s no fireplace in the basement, so late nights they sit shoulder to shoulder under a blanket on the couch, the laptop perched on his lap or hers, Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s soothing voice lulling even Sherlock to a version of peace and contentment. It reminds her of a sleepover, the two of them snuggled under a blanket like she and her friends used to do as kids. All that’s missing is giant flashlights and a huge bag of goldfish crackers.

So that’s something. It’s a little bit of him, and a little bit of her. Jostling each other for space on the beat-up couch that should in theory comfortably seat both of them, lazily arguing about which one of them Clyde prefers, like it’s a competition. Slapping his hand away when he “loses” at Jeopardy and goes for the remote in frustration.

She likes to watch old reruns of Jeopardy sometimes, when she’s taking a break from whichever case she’s currently working on. Sherlock has his methods of loci and plastering their one bathroom in evidence files, and she does this. Armchair Jeopardy. Hoping that rapidly cycling through a plethora of obscure and vaguely-related facts might jar something lose in her mind, help her connect some dots. 

Sherlock likes to play his own version of armchair Jeopardy, on the occasions when he joins her. He knows all the answers (or so he boasts), so his game is predicting which contestant will win by observing the body language of the participants. That suits Joan fine, as long as it keeps him from blurting out the answers.

Tonight, she’s too tired to play, so she props her chin on his shoulder and watches him root for his contestant, an older woman with wire-rim glasses. She chuckles when the woman snatches the correct answer from right under her competitors, makes sympathetic noises when she doesn’t buzz in quickly enough.

Her eyelids droop, and the next thing she knows she’s waking up in time to see Sherlock’s favored contestant win a significant amount of money. She reluctantly pries her head off Sherlock’s shoulder and rotates her neck to get the cricks out, swiping at the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand.

They bundle up in companionable silence, pulling on outwear and gloves and scarves. She’s still a little groggy, trying valiantly to shake off the fog of lethargy, but she manages to put everything on the right parts of her body. Sherlock gives her a critical once-over when she’s done and pulls off his beanie, plopping it onto her head, and she tries to argue with him.

“Sherlock.” She tries for her sternest look but isn’t sure she’s quite pulling it off. “I’ll be fine, you need it more, you have like no hair.”

Oops. She’s groggier than she thought. If he’s surprised at her momentary lapse of filter, he doesn’t react beyond the raise of one eyebrow. He just tugs the hood of her jacket up over her beanie-clad head, pulls up the hood on his own jacket, and tucks her into his side, and together they brave the twenty feet in the cold to their front door.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Joan** : Is this my bra?_  
_**Sherlock** : Yes, I needed the underwire. I was testing whether Miss Moreno_  
_could have fashioned a suitable lock pick from the tools at her disposal._  
_**3x22 The Best Way Out Is Always Through**_

 

Joan drifts downstairs, drawn by the aroma of browning meat and the siren call of the whirring blender. Sherlock’s sizzling bacon on the stove, his green-and-white striped apron clashing merrily with his plaid button-up.

“Morning, Watson!” He beams at her, then waves the spatula in her general direction. “Is that my shirt?”

Joan looks down at the shirt she wore to bed last night. “Oh, this? Yes.”

“Not that I don’t approve, but is there a particular reason you’re plundering my wardrobe for sleepwear? Secret gambling debts dipping into your clothing funds?”

“Hah. No.” She crosses over to the cabinet, pulls out a glass for water. Joan’s gotten good, over her time cohabitating with Sherlock, at saying nothing even when prompted, the way he used to annoy her at the very beginning. The student has become the master, in more ways than one.

She glances over at him as she tugs open the fridge door, and he’s pouting at her like she's done him some grave wrong by not giving him a straight answer right away. More importantly, he’s too focused on her to properly watch the bacon, so she relents.

“Remember what happened yesterday?”

“We solved a case, put dangerous criminals behind bars?”

She makes a noncommittal noise, pulling the pitcher of water out of the fridge and pouring herself a glass.

“I took Clyde for a walk?”

She pauses, glass halfway to her lips. “You took Clyde outside?”

“No, I’m not _daft_. I let him traverse the terrain of your bed. He seemed to quite enjoy it.”

Joan tries to muster a glare but finds herself failing. “Not that,” she says instead.

He blows out a breath, tapping the spatula against the side of the pan, and she sees the moment he lights upon it. “My experiment yesterday…” he trails off uncertainly.

“Yes, you stole my shirt and re-purposed it as part of your makeshift slingshot.”

He scrunches up his face in a passable imitation of remorse. “Yes, and I’m afraid I also utilized a pair of your socks.”

“Oh, I know.” Joan pulls out a pair of oversized socks from the pocket of her pajama bottoms and pulls them on, a smile twitching the corner of her lips. “And I know you said you’d replace them but until then…these are pretty comfy.” She wiggles her toes as Sherlock pretends to glare at her.

 

* * *

 

Two weeks later she shows up to a crime scene with Sherlock’s checkered scarf wound around her neck and a pair of his sunglasses propped up on her head. His pea coat is a little big on her, but she’s wearing it as a trench coat over a baggy sweater, and it works.

Bell takes one look at her as she comes up the sidewalk. “Is it Dress Like Sherlock Day and everyone forgot to tell me?”

She laughs, nodding to a few uniformed officers she’s friendly with, and Bell grins back even as he raises one eyebrow. “Is it that obvious?”

“It’s the scarf,” he tells her. “I recognize it because he wears that thing all winter long. Although now I’m noticing the coat…and the sunglasses too?”

“Good eye.” She gestures him closer, leans on the side of the building and tugs up the hem of the pair of bee socks she’s wearing.

“Now _that’s_ not something you see every day.”

She huffs out a laugh and readjusts the sunglasses on her head. “Sherlock _borrows_ my stuff sometimes, for his experiments. He always promises to replace whatever he’s used but I’ve found it easier to just swipe his stuff in return.”

Bell hands her a pair of latex gloves as they duck under the crime scene tape. “I thought you guys were doing a clothes swap or something. Hey, if you’re into menswear, do you want some of my old stuff? For some reason I’m still growing out of clothes, and you’d probably fit into a lot of what I wear. Not that you need it, of course...”

 

* * *

 

A few days later Joan pops into a high-end boutique to interview the owner, a person of interest in their current case. She’s wearing one of Bell’s coats over one of Sherlock’s t-shirts she’d converted into a shirtdress.

The owner does a double take as she walks in. “Damn girl, who dresses you?”

“Oh,” Joan says, “it’s a group effort.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written before the season 3 finale, though I kind of want to go back and write the version of movie night with Alfredo on the roof.

_**Moriarty:** You look a bit tired._  
_**Sherlock:** You look a bit evil._  
_**Moriarty** [catching sight of Joan] **:** Joan!_  
**_2x12 The Diabolical Kind_ **

 

Joan wakes slowly, a low buzzing tugging her to consciousness. She’s sprawled out on the couch in the library, Sherlock’s head pillowed on her thigh. The laptop perched precariously on the edge of a footstool plays the DVD menu for Godzilla on a loop.

Oh right – movie night. The past two weeks had consisted of three grueling cases back to back, and she had wanted nothing more than to collapse into sleep upon closing the last one, but Sherlock had insisted on their Friday night tradition.

It seems like they both ended up getting what they wanted anyway.

The buzzing stops, then starts up again. Joan nudges Sherlock, who tries to roll over and wedge himself between her and the back of the couch in response.

“Phone,” she gets out, grabbing it off the arm of the couch and pressing it to the side of his face. He peers at it and taps the screen at random until–

“Sheerrrlock,” a familiar voice slurs.

Joan blinks herself awake, sitting up and dislodging Sherlock from her lap in the process. “Is that–”

“Joan!” Moriarty cuts her off, voice tinny and distorted through the speakerphone. “I’ve missed you, Joan!”

Joan lets her head fall back against the couch and groans.

“Joan! Sherlock! I was just reading about your latest case, the one with the drug ring operating out of a pizza parlor!”

The bass pounding in the background is loud enough that Moriarty has to shout to be heard. Joan doubts she’s been reading.

She is, however, still talking. “What an inspired solve! Ingenious, even.”

Sherlock finally disengages himself from the couch cushions, trying – but not succeeding – in catching the empty popcorn bowl that tumbles to the floor as a result. “Are you calling us in the middle of the night to offer congratulations for foiling one of your schemes? That’s a little excessive, even for you.”

“Oh, I’d love to claim credit, but just between us, that’s not even mine–” There’s the telltale sound of bodies colliding, and a muttered “excuse you,” and then Moriarty’s back on the line.

 “We should go out sometime, you know, the three of us. For old times’ sake…”

 _What old times’ sake_ , Joan thinks, as she reaches over and disconnects the call with a decisive tap before flopping back onto the couch.

Sherlock blinks up at her from his new position on the floor, clutching the popcorn bowl. “I think it might be time to change my number. Again. Also, did we fall asleep partway through the masterpiece that is Godzilla?”

“It would appear so.”

“Seeing as we’re up now, would you like to continue with the remake?”

“Ugh, no thanks.”

“Pacific Rim, then?”

Joan grins and stretches, pushing herself up to snag the empty bowl from Sherlock.

“Start it. I’ll make more popcorn.”


End file.
